


dream me the world, something new for every night

by hyunsparkles



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bang Chan & Lee Felix are Related, Han Jisung | Han & Kim Seungmin are Best Friends, M/M, Magical Realism, Mentioned Bang Chan, Mentioned Lee Minho | Lee Know, Mild Language, Minor Han Jisung | Han/Hwang Hyunjin, Self-Discovery, author has an embarrassing obsession with dream sequences, han jisung is a panicked gay, jisung thinks boys are Pretty, oscar wilde-esque descriptions of boys, sorta a soulmate au if you squint??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:40:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23601706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyunsparkles/pseuds/hyunsparkles
Summary: “C’mon, Sungie,” he says, meeting Jisung’s eyes with a wicked grin. “It’ll be fun.”“Lix, you’re turningpurple.”Felix shrugs. “So what? It’s not like I’ll die for real. It’s just a dream.”Or: That one where Jisung and Felix share dreams every night for nearly thirteen years, like magic, even though they live an entire ocean apart. One day, Felix shows up in Jisung's homeroom in real life and everything changes.
Relationships: Han Jisung | Han/Lee Felix
Comments: 40
Kudos: 259





	dream me the world, something new for every night

**Author's Note:**

> TWs: While in a dream, characters briefly mention drowning in a flippant/joking manner. Someone is outed as gay and it causes some internal distress, but no one is homophobic about it. Some latent internalized homophobia. 
> 
> I owe the title and part of the inspiration to this story to Maggie Stiefvater's Raven Cycle series. 
> 
> Also the first 2000 words or so is heavily reliant on dream sequences, but I promise the rest of the work isn't like that!!

Jisung is four the first time he dreams of the boy. This first time, he is nearly alone on a beach. He remembers blazing sunlight, the roar of the sea waves as they crash up against his feet. He tastes salt on his tongue. His toes are numb with the shocking cold of the water.

The wind kicks up, suddenly, and a boy appears beside him, blinking into existence like a light. He wears dark blue pajamas with smiling cartoon sharks and can’t be more than four or five, his face still round with the last hints of baby fat. He smiles at the sight of the waves. 

His smile drops once his gaze meets Jisung’s.

“What are you doing?” The boy inquires. His black hair whips about in the wind, getting in his eyes, and he brushes it away impatiently. “This is _my_ dream.”

Jisung blinks. He’s struck by the oddity of the sentence; it’s like the boy knows for sure what does or doesn’t belong in one of his dreams. But that would be weird, so instead, Jisung says, “No, it's _mine_.” 

The boy shakes his head insistently. “No, it’s mine.” His dark eyes narrow. 

And the boy’s voice is so insistent, so rigid with certainty, that Jisung says, “Okay.” Then, remembering what his mom always told him to do with mean kids, he suggests, “let’s be friends. I’m Jisung.” 

The boy’s frown dissipates a little. He blinks once, twice. “Oh. I’m.. I’m Felix.”

And then Jisung wakes up.

The second time the boy appears, Jisung is six. In the dream, he is alone in his bed. It is nighttime, and his parents have just said good night, light from the hall trickling in from under his doorway. 

He is just about to get under the covers when he hears it: the sound. It’s unlike anything Jisung has ever heard before. It’s like nails on a chalkboard, like a carrion bird screeching. It’s like massive talons against an aging hardwood floor, and that’s exactly what Jisung sees when he gathers enough courage to lean slowly over the edge of his bed. His heart pounds in his chest.

Shadows pour off the talon - the claw? - which is protruding from under his bed like a spider. The digits tap once, twice. They make no sound. Then, achingly slowly, they begin to climb up the side of Jisung’s bed.

There is an arm, now, covered in black scales, attached to that terrible hand as it crawls up the covers. He tries to scream for his parents, but his throat isn’t working. He can hear his heart in his ears. 

The hand reaches the top of the bedspread. Something laughs, darkly amused, clearly coming from under his bed. 

Jisung tries to scream again, but all he can manage is a whisper, barely more than a croak: “Felix!”

In retrospect, he isn’t sure why, of all people, that’s who he calls for. It had been enough years that Felix was barely a hint of a memory, and yet, somehow, a deep, hidden part of his brain pulled the name out.

He feels a sharp pull in his stomach, like a rope tied to his navel is being pulled taut, and then he is mercifully pulled from his dream into Felix’s.

He appears in a strange classroom, on a colorful rug. He is surrounded by kids with hair and skin tones he’s never seen before, a few kids with tight, spiraling curls and dark skin, a lot of kids with light hair and skin. They are all staring at Felix.

Gratefully, Jisung feels his heartbeat begin to slow. He takes a long breath, feeling tears prick at his eyes. _That was really scary._

Felix stands at the front of the rug. His eyes are red, his nose running. Tears pour down his face.

A faceless, nameless kid snickers. “How do you forget your show and tell? Loser.”

Felix is about to respond when he makes eye contact with Jisung. The dream stutters, like it’s glitching, and the faceless voice fades from existence. Felix’s eyes widen at him. “What are you doing here?”

“I- I don’t know,” Jisung stammers. “I just said your name and came here.” He looks around: everyone else, including Felix, is wearing prim green woolen sweaters and khaki pants or skirts. Jisung is wearing his favorite Spongebob pajamas. He feels his face warm. 

A blurry, faceless woman appears. Jisung knows in the way of dreams that she is the teacher, and very mean. 

“Felix, go sit down,” she says pointedly. “Show and tell is over.”

Felix sits down, visibly relieved, next to Jisung. “This is weird,” he whispers. The teacher is talking over him, but he is paying no heed. “You just came here?”

“Yeah.” Jisung looks around again at the classroom. “Is this your school?”

Felix sniffles. He pulls his knees up to his chest, resting his chin on his arms. “Yeah. I hate it. Everyone is mean, especially in dreams.”

“I’m sorry,” Jisung says, not knowing what else to say. The dream stutters again, the teacher’s voice cutting off briefly. And then it changes. 

When Jisung is fifteen, he realizes he’s in love with Lee Felix.

They’re back at the beach where they first met, because it’s Felix’s dream, and he’s always had more control than Jisung. It’s all too easy for Jisung to get caught up in the narrative his brain wants to play, but by now, Felix can change the dreamscape without the slightest exertion. Every time Jisung tries the same thing- to change a dream to the long, open streets of Itaewon, for example - the concentration makes him wake up. 

Jisung has grown up dreaming with Felix. They’re close enough now that they don’t even need to call each other into the other’s dream: they just appear together, like magic. Jisung doesn’t quite believe in magic - he’s much too old for that - but Felix feels the closest to it. Years and years of spending eight hours (or seven, or six, or five, as they grew older) a night together brings them closer than is normally possible for friends. They face each other’s demons in semi-tangible form, after all. And not just demons, of course. Jisung has had Felix pull him out of particularly embarrassing dreams more than once, when the deep-navel pull of a normal dream sequence grows too strong for him to be able to avoid it alone.

With Felix, dreams that would be otherwise blurry and undefined jump into vivid technicolor, just a half-step away from reality. With Felix, Jisung can make actual choices, feel real pain. Dreaming with Felix feels so much like real life that when he is younger, his parents catch him on multiple occasions searching for the boy during daylight hours.

The light wind caresses his cheek like a blessing, and Jisung looks out at his surroundings with a contented sigh. By now, Jisung can recognize the familiar swells of sand as Bondi Beach, Felix’s favorite beach in his hometown of Sydney, with no effort. It’s practically ingrained into his memory by now. 

Just then, a boy appears waist-deep in the water, his wet pajama shirt pasted to his skin, dark hair flat against his forehead and pouring water into his eyes. He waves enthusiastically, then yells something Jisung can’t quite catch. 

Jisung grins, then mouths, _I can’t hear you._

Felix can’t seem to see him clearly. He yells again, his lips moving, the hint of vowels and consonants blowing away with the breeze. 

Jisung rolls his eyes, then walks over to the water. He gets as far as putting his toes in, but recoils immediately with the brief shock of cold. “Shit, man, it’s freezing.” He glares at Felix. “So… are there mermaids or not?”

Felix shakes his head. His eyes sparkle. “I couldn’t get deep enough. The dream kept wanting me to drown. I did meet a few sharks, though! It was like a video game, they had big bloody teeth and stuff! I think I’m gonna go back in. You should come with.”

Jisung blinks. “No, thanks. I don’t want to get eaten by sharks today.”

Felix walks over to him, actively dripping water, and grabs Jisung’s arm before he can pull away. He is freezing cold to the touch, his lips blue, his skin one or two shades paler than normal. “C’mon, Sungie,” he says, meeting Jisung’s eyes with a wicked grin. “It’ll be fun.”

“Lix, you’re turning _purple.”_

Felix shrugs. “So what? It’s not like I’ll die for real. It’s just a dream.” 

And here is where they’re different: Felix has always taken to the dreamscape like a fish to water. Controlling it comes naturally to him, as does shedding the normal fear of death that would cage him in real life. But Jisung cannot shake who he is awake quite as easily. What fears exist outside of the dream, follow him in.

But he loves Felix, nonetheless. So he steps into the water, rolling his eyes, feeling his teeth begin to chatter. “I’m going to die.”

“Yeah,” Felix replies, with that wide grin still painting his face. “Yeah, you will. But then you’ll wake up.” 

Jisung almost says it: I don’t want to wake up. He looks at Felix, at that constellation of freckles, dark eyes crinkled with his wide smile, the beginnings of a sunset reflected in his irises. He feels something stir in his heart.

Felix’s smile fades. He’s always been so perceptive. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” Jisung says, because there isn’t. “Just worried about those damn sharks.”

Felix swings a dripping arm over Jisung’s shoulders and leans his head against Jisung’s. Jisung feels warmth emanating from his core, even when he feels his skin temperature begin to drop where Felix makes contact with his shirt or skin. 

“Let’s go find some. You can be bait, dude.”

Jisung huffs a laugh.

It’s when Jisung is seventeen, when the dreams stop and then start up again, that everything changes.

It’s Felix’s dream again, and they’re at Bondi Beach. Jisung used to complain, but he’s long given in. If it’s Felix’s dream, it will always be Bondi Beach. And since Felix is happiest here, standing tall against the whipping wind and roiling ocean, Jisung is all too willing to let him have what he wants.

The beach is empty as always, an endless stretch of sand encompassing both sides of his peripheral vision. The waves are dark and roiling, the normally sunny skies a dusty gray. 

Jisung lies down in the sand, squinting at the sky. He can feel the sand crunch under his weight. He takes a handful of sand and slowly pours it onto his shirt. 

He used to play a game with Felix. They’d test if stains or burns or water on their clothes in the dream ever followed them to real life. It was to no avail; the dream didn’t carry. If Jisung swam in the frigid May waves crashing to the beach right now, he would wake up dry. The yellow stain of sand on his gray v-neck would be gone in the morning.

There is a thump from beside him. Jisung feels a warm hand entwine with his. 

“Hey, Felix,” he says, feeling his pulse pick up. “What’s up?”

Felix groans from beside him. “Fuck this,” he says emphatically. He has a supernaturally deep voice, one that rumbles in his chest and curls around his tongue. “Fuck me. I hate everything.”

As if in response, thunder crashes from in the distance. Jisung isn’t worried: nothing really happens in the Bondi Beach dreamscape. Most of Felix’s dreamscapes are extremely vulnerable to suggestion, able to turn from or into a nightmare simply by a change in his moods, but for some reason, at Bondi Beach, any changes are subtle: thunder, temperature changes, maybe some wind. Nothing else.

Jisung rolls over to face him, feeling Felix release his hand as he does. “What happened, Lixie?” 

Felix doesn’t respond. He’s wearing his favorite band t-shirt, an oversized white Skrillex number that Jisung has seen more times than he can count. Jisung looks down and sees Felix’s hands balled into fists, clenching at handfuls of sand so hard it’s slowly coming out of the cracks between his fingers. 

Jisung pokes Felix gently, then less gently when the other boy still doesn’t offer up an explanation. 

Jisung frowns. It’s unlike Felix to be this reticent; he’s usually as talkative as Jisung. 

“Ow,” Felix growls, recoiling from an especially hard poke to his nose. “Stop it, Sungie.”

“Tell me,” Jisung replies stubbornly. “What is it? Why are you mad?”

Instead of responding, Felix suddenly stands up. His heels catch, spraying sand into Jisung’s eyes. Jisung yelps as his eyes begin to burn.

Felix, now standing, mutters an apology, then turns to look at the surf, considering. “Do you think the water’s too cold to swim?” 

The water roars from the surf, the wind whipping it against the sand. At the edges of Jisung’s vision, he can see dark, ugly cumulonimbus clouds forming. Not exactly swimming weather.

But he knows, too, that if anything will get Felix to calm down, it’s the ocean. Before this year, he spent so much of his free time swimming with his older brother, Chris, that his hair smelled perpetually of salt or chlorine.

So Jisung shrugs, rolling to his back and tucking his fingers under his head. “Heck if I know. This is your dream.”

Felix pauses, like he’s listening to something. His gaze is faraway. Jisung takes the opportunity to watch him, craning his neck so he can see the other boy. 

Felix’s shirt is rippling in the wind, pressing against the outline of his chest. When they were younger, he was scrawny and short, all bony limbs and awkwardness. Puberty hit him a few years ago, with his deep, deep voice and, then, the beginnings of muscle. Sometimes, Jisung would notice, wondering at the changes that his friend was experiencing.

But lately, Jisung can’t stop noticing. All he does is notice. 

Felix has real muscle now, the outline of defined abs clear against his shirt when it presses against him in the wind. All the awkwardness is gone, too. He moves and speaks with purpose.

He isn’t a boy anymore, not really. It makes Jisung feel- things. His heart jumps in his throat just watching him.

Jisung’s gaze flickers upward. Felix’s cheeks are dusted with the barest hint of freckles. Normally, there would be a full constellation on display by October, but they’re seventeen now, and junior year is hitting them hard, forcing them inside for upwards of 12 hours a day to study for exams. The lack of sun has prevented his freckles from appearing the way they usually do.

Felix turns back to face Jisung. He’s about to say something when he registers Jisung’s attention, his eyes widening fractionally. His gaze turns complicated.

Jisung looks away, his face growing warm. Sometimes, in moments like these, he wonders how much Felix knows about Jisung’s feelings for him.

“I think the ocean is probably fine,” Felix says, as if nothing has happened. He brushes his hair out of his eyes. “The dream doesn’t feel like it has nightmare potential.”

Jisung nods awkwardly. “Uh, okay. That’s good. Are you gonna go in?”

Felix doesn’t even answer; his response is obvious. Instead, he walks closer to Jisung and stretches out a hand, a smile flickering across his face.

Jisung has dreamt a thousand fevered daydreams about those hands; about the tan skin, bony knuckles and visibly protruding veins. Felix doesn’t have particularly long or elegant fingers, but they make Jisung lose his breath momentarily, nonetheless.

Meanwhile, Felix doesn’t seem to notice, his hint of a smile graduating to a grin that is much more like him. He blinks down at Jisung, wiggling his fingers. “Come with me?” 

Jisung doesn’t even have to think. “Of course.” He grabs Felix’s hand; the other boy hauls him upward. For a brief second, they are nose to nose.

Felix takes a step back. Something flickers in his eyes. Then: “Sungie, I’m moving to Korea.”

And all Jisung can think is, _please._

When they finally swim, the water is frigid, so much so that Jisung has the sense that if the dream did carry to real life, he would wake up in the morning with a serious case of frostbite. 

Felix relaxes a little, his tongue loosening with the calming effects of the water, but it isn’t the same. Something in their relationship is pulled taut, like candy strings. 

Jisung doesn’t ask more about what Felix meant. He’s too afraid those strings will tear. 

For a few seconds after Jisung wakes up, his brain still thinks he’s in the dreamscape. He feels his shirt plastered to his skin, goosebumps raised along his arms, the sharp tang of the saltwater disappearing from his tongue. He feels almost buoyant, like he’s floating.

But then he comes to his senses, and the sensations all but disappear. He’s dry and warm in his bed, his blankets pulled nearly over his head. He’s not cold; in fact, he’s nearly sweating under the heat of his down comforter. Jisung can hear his alarm blaring tinnily in the background, reminding him where he is in time and space.

Jisung clambers blurrily out of bed. He turns his alarm off with a mildly passive-aggressive swipe. 

The back of his head is pounding the beginnings of a tension headache, and he rubs his forehead absentmindedly. He checks the time: 6:01. 

It’s a chilly Monday in October, just cold enough to complain about, but not quite enough to merit the hassle of bringing a jacket. All the way to school, Jisung feels almost dizzy. His headache is growing steadily, and at the back of his brain, he keeps thinking of Felix, about what it might mean for them. He is so distracted, in fact, that he takes a wrong turn on his walk to school, something he hasn’t done since he was in ninth year. It makes him late to first period.

By lunchtime, Jisung has slammed into at least three or four people in the hallways and upset his belongings from his desk at least once. He even knocks over his best friend, Seungmin, who he usually remembers to look out for. 

Seungmin likes to read in the hallway. He usually trusts that people are paying enough attention to move out of his way, and honestly, he’s usually right. No one in their right mind would run into the class president.

Well, except Jisung, apparently. It’s like he’s surrounded by mist, separating him from the rest of the world. It’s like a dream; like a proper dream, the ones people talk about- not the hyper-realistic ones he shares with Felix. The bite of consequences dulls under the haze of his headache and his swirling thoughts. 

His brain plays the same moment over and over again: Felix’s hand grasping his, the soft wash of Felix’s breath for a half-second, a thousandth of a second, Felix pulling away. _I’m moving to Korea,_ he said. 

That night, Jisung dreams of the ocean again.

He’s at a beach, just like last night, but these waves, unlike the monster waves at Bondi, barely reach his ankles. The sand is swarming with faceless, nameless people.  
It’s not like Felix’s beloved Bondi Beach because it isn’t Bondi Beach, where the only sounds are Felix’s voice and the crash of the massive waves storming into the sand.

And it is then, with that understanding, that Jisung begins to realize with almost crushing intensity that Felix isn’t coming.

Like a proper dream, he’s been here before. The back of his memory reminds him that this is Haeundae Beach, a place he visited once on vacation in Busan with his family. The sand is littered with umbrellas, towels, food trash, and abandoned plastic. Close by, the sounds of downtown Busan roar in the background. A child is crying somewhere. But he knows all of this instead of hearing or seeing it. Again, it is a proper dream.

Suddenly, someone brushes by his ankles. Jisung shies away instinctively, feeling a small hand touch his pants. He looks down.

It’s Felix, thirteen years younger. He looks the same as when Jisung first met him, with a spray of messy black hair and those ubiquitous navy blue shark pajamas. But he’s blurry. Jisung doesn’t see these things in detail, just like with the scenery. He simply knows they’re there. 

Little Felix blinks up at him, his eyes wide, eyes searching the space Jisung occupies. “Where did you go?” He asks, spreading out his fingers, as if trying to catch something large in his palms. Jisung notices - knows - that the boy is barefoot, his toes curled into the granular sand.

Jisung is about to reply when little Felix asks again, more frantic: “Where did you go?” His eyes are suddenly red, like he is on the verge of tears. He looks around, like he can’t see Jisung. When he puts out his hand again, it goes right through Jisung, like he’s invisible.

Felix asks again: “Where did you go?” Then he asks again. And then again. And again, incessant and rapid-fire, the octave rising each time, so Jisung can’t get a word in edgewise, can only stare with muted horror. 

He asks it again. Again. Again again again. It’s a scream, a wail, a high-pitched sob that can only be produced by small children. The people begin to whisper around him, and then they disappear. 

Slowly, Jisung feels something terrible rise up in his chest, catching in his throat and pulling at his lips. And then, by the time Felix is scream-crying the words, the feeling crashes against the shore.

He collapses onto the sand on all fours, tiny Felix still bawling into his ear, and tastes salt on his tongue, as sharp as the tang of the Australian ocean, his heart burning in his chest. He sits there for what feels like an eternity, shaking with that awful, awful feeling.

He is mercifully torn from the dream when his mom shakes him awake, something she hasn’t done since he was very little. 

Jisung blinks up at her, his eyelashes somehow heavy. “What are you..?” 

“You were crying, Sungie,” she says, touching his face briefly. Her eyes search his face in the dark. “You were crying so loudly you woke us up.”

When she leaves, Jisung stares up at the ceiling for what feels like hours, but can’t realistically be more than ten minutes, and simply breathes. If only there was a magic pill to forget your dreams.

 _Maybe Felix is never coming back,_ Jisung mulls over. _Maybe I’ve ruined it. Maybe I’ll never see him again and it’s all my fault._

His alarm kicks in loud, reminding him to get ready for school. 

Kicking off his blankets, Jisung takes a shuddering sigh. His hand drifts to his collar, to the ring of sweat that has soaked through his shirt. 

He never wants to dream again. 

\-----

It’s another dreary Monday, two weeks to the last time Jisung dreamed with Felix, and his class is nearly buzzing with excitement when Jisung finally slides into his seat in the back of the class. He overslept today, so he missed the homeroom announcements. It looks like everyone is working in groups already on a math assignment, or is at least supposed to be.

Seungmin, who sits next to him, is already working on the assignment, his nose buried in the desk. He doesn’t so much as twitch with Jisung’s arrival.

“Hey, Min,” Jisung says cheerily. He pulls some pens out of his bag, then raises his hand. “Mr. Kim, can I have a worksheet?”

The student teacher, a remarkably patient twenty-something, looks up and smiles. He’s standing at the front of the room, by the blackboard, explaining definite integrals to a very confused looking male classmate. Jeongin, maybe? Jisung can’t remember. 

“I’ll be there in a moment, Jisung,” Mr. Kim calls over the light chatter. “Have Seungmin explain today’s topic in the meantime. I’m sure he’d be delighted.”

Seungmin doesn’t speak up at first: he’s focused on drawing out a perfect integral sign. But when he finally looks up, his eyebrows are raised. He quirks a smile. “Sungie, you’ll never guess. While you were missing homeroom, we got a new student.”

Jisung shrugs. “So?”

“Well, I think I might actually believe you now! You know, about your weird dream crush.”

Jisung blinks, once quickly and the second longer as he registers Seungmin’s words. “Uh, what?”

Seungmin doesn’t seem to notice. He spins his pen between a few of his fingers absentmindedly. “Yeah, we’ve got a new kid. His name is Felix, he just moved here from Australia. Kinda like your Felix, I think?”

Jisung rotates around so fast he almost gives himself whiplash. He scans the classroom once, twice. “Where is he?” He asks quickly. “I don’t see him.”

Then, before Seungmin can reply, Mr. Kim comes by to give Jisung the worksheet and briefly explain the activity. The entire time, Jisung taps his foot, taps his pencil, looks up at Mr. Kim and down at the page and nods, _yes, yes, I’m listening,_ even though he isn’t paying attention to a single word coming out of the man’s mouth.

Finally, a good five minutes later, Mr. Kim leaves to help another student. Jisung turns to Seungmin, and hisses, “Where is he?” 

Seungmin, meanwhile, has stopped paying attention. Jisung doesn’t blame him, frankly. His friend scratches out a few numbers halfway down the page, then frowns at them blankly. “That doesn’t look right.”

Jisung leans over and scans the sheet. “It’s because you have to multiply Reimann sums by the width of the rectangle, stupid,” he says impatiently. “Where’s the new kid?”

“If you’d been paying attention at all this year, you would know,” Seungmin says neutrally. “Only one person has been without a seat partner this entire year. You hate him.”

“I hate a lot of people, Minnie,” Jisung admits. “That’s not very specific.” 

“Oh, shit, they’re staring at us,” Seungmin whispers suddenly. Then, in his normal voice, “What did you get for number three?”

Jisung pays Seungmin’s whispered warnings no heed and looks around the classroom. _Who could be looking at us? We sit at the literal back._

Then, a modest baritone from his left: “Over here, loser.”

Jisung would recognize that voice anywhere, even though he’d forgotten that the boy sits across the aisle. 

It’s Hwang Hyunjin, captain of the soccer team. He’s tall and pretty, with big eyes, strong shoulders, and a jawline like whoa. They’re kind of enemies, and through an extraordinarily upsetting stroke of fate, they’ve ended up in the exact same homeroom class each year since they were ten.

Just in the last four and a half years, they’ve gotten into two fistfights and probably more than a thousand verbal altercations. Normally, their teacher seats them in the exact opposite sides of the room, but the new student teacher apparently likes to play with fire. 

Seungmin said that Jisung hated Hyunjin. He’s not wrong, but he’s not right, either. It isn’t that Jisung hates him, exactly; it’s more that Jisung hates how Hyunjin made him feel. When he was younger and more inclined to repressing his feelings, he learned to turn his attraction into dislike.

It’s been four years. Even though Jisung knows better now, that dislike has yet to fade. 

And besides, it’s kind of warranted. The guy is so arrogant that once, it made Jisung so angry he got physically nauseous.

Jisung turns to Hyunjin with a scowl. He looks the same as always, lips prettily curled into a smug smirk. His tie is partially undone, his hair artfully messy.

“What do you want, you-” Then, realizing Hyunjin isn’t alone, Jisung stops, looks at the boy sitting next to him. Adrenaline whispers in his veins.

He purses his lips. “I… I don’t think we’ve met.”

A boy who looks exactly like Felix is sitting next to Hyunjin, gently leaning his back against the wall. He has the same swooping hairstyle, the same lean, muscular frame, the same bright eyes and careful Cupid’s bow and understated cheekbones. He’s not tall, just like Felix.

The boy stares at him, something in his gaze looking almost frightened for a few seconds. But then he relaxes, the frown melting into a tight smile. His hands fidget with his pencil above the desk. Jisung glances at the paper beneath his hands: it’s nearly blank. 

“I’m Felix,” he says hesitantly. “I’ve just moved from Australia.” If this is the same Felix, his voice is nothing like the dreams. Instead of perfect, accentless Korean, his tongue curls around the words, turning normally short vowels into diphthongs and turning Jisung’s heart to putty. 

Jisung remembers the dream at Haeundae Beach. His tongue remembers the taste of his own tears. He tries to speak, but it’s like his throat is clogged with his own nervousness.

A moment passes. The atmosphere grows awkward, Felix’s smile gradually slipping. Hyunjin is staring at him with an indiscernible expression. 

Seungmin nudges him from the side, looking concerned. “Uh…”

Jisung knows he should reply, but his mouth isn’t working. He can feel his face growing warm. 

He can’t do it - talk - so he doesn’t. Instead, he abruptly excuses himself to use the facilities, feeling Felix’s eyes boring into his back all the while.

“I can’t believe I didn’t say anything,” Jisung groans, hitting his head repeatedly against the lunch table. “God, I’m such an idiot.” 

It’s lunchtime, and Jisung’s stomach is growling unhappily, but he has yet to pick up his chopsticks. His actions earlier that day are just setting in, and he can’t believe himself. He’s incredulous at himself, in fact.

Seungmin, sitting across from him, nods his assent, his mouth too visibly full of rice to say anything. He swallows, then swallows again. “Yeah, kinda, Sungie.”

From next to him, a short boy with an emo haircut speaks up.

“Sungie, can you say it again?” The emo boy, Changbin, asks, his eyebrows raised. “I still don’t get it.” He’s a senior, and he and Jisung have been friends since forever. Their parents, who live in the same apartment complex, put them in daycare together. Everything after that, as they say, is history.

Jisung hides his head in his hands. “I can’t say it again, it’s too embarrassing.” His stomach growls again.

Through his fingers, Jisung sees Seungmin’s chopsticks quickly shovel more kimchi onto Jisung’s plate, as if he can do it without being noticed. 

When Jisung looks up and glares at him, Seungmin shrugs. “You should eat.”

“Whatever.” But he picks up his chopsticks anyway, taking a big bite of rice. “Besides, Changbin hyung, it isn’t like you haven’t heard the story already,” Jisung says, his voice muffled by his mouthful of food.

“So you’re still in love with him, then?” Changbin asks curiously. “Your dream boy?”

He is. But he doesn’t say that.

“Shut up!” Jisung whispers frantically, turning quickly and hitting Changbin on the shoulder with his free hand. “Someone might hear you!”

Changbin pushes him back, but without any force. “It’s not like anyone’s listening to the loser table anyway. I wouldn’t worry about that.” He smiles suddenly. “So… did I tell you guys about my job?”

“Yes, you _definitely_ have,” Seungmin looks up from his food. He raises his eyebrows. “You mean the one you literally never stop complaining about?”

Changbin pauses. His cheeks pinken. “Well, see, there’s this guy, he’s new...”

Seungmin groans. His chopsticks clatter to the table. “Hyung, there’s always a guy.”

“No, but I think he likes me for real! Not like the others. So we were sorting boxes last night, right? And he turns to me and…” Changbin trails off, his smile dropping. He’s looking past Seungmin’s shoulder with his stranger face: the expressionless one he shows to everyone else. Then, his face like stone, he asks, “can we help you?”

It’s Felix, who is apparently impervious to Changbin’s iron gaze. The boy smiles tentatively, brushing his hair out of his eyes, and Jisung’s heart patters in his chest. “I- yeah. Um… can I sit down?”

“No,” Jisung says abruptly. He isn’t sure why he says it. It’s like fear momentarily possesses him. He can’t imagine what he would say to this boy, Felix but maybe not his Felix.

There’s a long silence. Jisung can feel Seungmin kicking him sharply under the table. He risks a glance at his friend; Seungmin eyes are so wide they look like they’re about to pop out, his back still facing Felix.

Felix doesn’t look very surprised, and he takes the rejection with surprising grace. “I- okay. I guess I’ll go sit with Jinnie, then.” 

“Jinnie?” Jisung asks, before he can stop himself. “You’re sitting with _Hwang Hyunjin?”_

But Felix is already gone, disappearing into the crowd with his chin and lunch tray held high.

There’s another silence, broken only by the clinking of Seungmin’s chopsticks against the stainless steel rice bowl.

“No,” Jisung whispers, feeling the force of what he’s just done sink in. “No, what the fuck…” Jisung hides his head in his hands again. He is officially in awe of himself, but in the absolute worst way. How does he do this? Who cursed him? 

“Well,” Changbin says, turning back to his food, his voice resigned. “Um, that was mean. And also, you’re screwed. If you haven’t ruined it with whatever the hell that was, Hyunjin will finish the job for you.”

Seungmin reaches across the table and claps Jisung on the shoulder, smirking. “At least you’re doing better. You told Hyunjin to go fuck himself back then, right?”

“Ugh, thanks for the reminder, Minnie,” Jisung mutters into his hands. “Really.”

“Anyway,” Changbin says, ignoring him as his face brightens, “as I was saying, my coworker’s name is Minho and he’s really cute! Turns out he’s a senior here, too... ”

Seungmin rolls his eyes. “Hyung, you’re blind.” 

Once upon a time, Han Jisung was in love with his best friend, Hwang Hyunjin. 

Hyunjin joined Jisung’s class when they were in fifth grade, barely ten years old. At the time, he was almost painfully shy. The first time Jisung tried to talk to him, he buried his face in his arms, and it only got a little better from there. Jisung tried to engage the boy - his seat partner - at every opportunity, but Hyunjin always brushed him off.

August turned to September, and still, Hyunjin wouldn’t talk. Everyone began to whisper that he was stuck-up; that he had selective mutism; that he’d given up his tongue in a sacred gang ritual (this one even Jisung had to admit was a little silly). Regardless, no matter how much he tried not to, Jisung was getting really, really frustrated with his quiet, quiet table partner. 

One day, despite his better judgement, Jisung exploded on him. And Hyunjin, surprisingly, exploded back. He was as stubborn as Jisung, it turned out, and not at all stuck-up or even selectively mute, just unusually shy with strangers. They decided to be friends, and that was that.

Seungmin hadn’t moved to their town yet, so back then, it was just Changbin, Jisung, and Hyunjin, like three peas in a pod. 

Years passed. Hyunjin blossomed, and sometimes, Jisung felt like Hyunjin was a completely different person. Ten-year-old Hyunjin barely talked; thirteen-year-old Hyunjin was gregarious almost to a fault. The former Hyunjin was cool to be around, for sure. But now he was comfortable, and it turned out he was funny and silly and touchy and everyone loved him, including Jisung. He was tall, too: puberty had hit him early. He was tall and his smile made Jisung feel things that he couldn’t name yet.

One night, Jisung had a dream about him. Jisung has since blocked out the details, but he remembers waking shocked and confused and almost painfully, painfully ashamed. 

Barely two weeks later, Hyunjin told Jisung he loved him, albeit platonically. Jisung, beyond flustered, still coming to terms with his sexuality and what it meant, told Hyunjin that he could go fuck himself. And before Jisung could try to explain himself, Hyunjin in his hurt only added gasoline to the blaze.

Their friendship burned. Changbin picked Jisung’s side, so to speak, simply because he’d known him longer. And since then, Hyunjin and Jisung have been enemies.

Seventeen-year-old Jisung knows he shouldn’t have said all of those things. But he’s also under no illusion that explaining himself to Hyunjin now, when they’ve been at it for years, would solve anything. At best, he would embarrass himself, admitting that he’d been in love with the other boy. Every time he considers it, his fears remind him of the worst: Hyunjin might find him strange or disgusting. 

And he isn’t ready for that. So he keeps quiet.

After the events of today, Jisung hopes dearly that he hasn’t started the same thing with Felix. But the Australian boy isn’t nearly as incendiary as Hyunjin. Maybe they can just coexist, live in their separate spheres, so long as Jisung keeps up his streak of not dreaming.

Because it’s not like he shares a bus route with Felix, or something. 

That afternoon, Jisung gets out of school a little late after a meeting with his music teacher, who needs him to make up a test he missed a while back. When he finally walks from the empty school hallways to his bus stop, it’s close to 6:30 PM, the sun beginning to lower itself down below the clouds. 

The streets are almost completely free of students: mostly adults talking into phones and carrying heavy black briefcases or overflowing leather purses. 

A chilled fog has settled in over the city, and Jisung has to squint to make out the blurry figures as he begins to approach the bus stop. He sees a pressed navy uniform and a black backpack. Jisung smiles- maybe Changbin waited for him. 

The closer Jisung gets, however, the more obvious it becomes that the figure is not Changbin. The boy leans next to the glass bus stop box, his shoulders hunched over with the October chill. 

Jisung is less than 15 feet away from the stop when he recognizes the figure: it’s Felix. He’s quietly mouthing lyrics, bopping his head this way and that as he watches the cars race by. Earphone cords run up from one of his jacket pockets and up under the edges of a worn black beanie. 

Jisung’s heart trips just looking at him. Felix looks achingly familiar, his lips curling into a bare hint of a smile that Jisung recognizes immediately. For one wild moment, he feels a greeting whispering at his lips. He wants to shout out, to jog over and make Felix laugh like he would in the dreams. 

But he doesn’t. He approaches slowly, coming around from the other side of the stop so he doesn’t have to cross Felix’s field of vision. A middle-aged woman with deep crow’s feet lining the sides of her eyes sits stiffly on the bench, a phone pressed to her ear. She’s the only other person at the stop.

Jisung sits a few feet away from her, falling to a seated position with a thump. He feels the vague damp of the metal seep slowly in through his pressed pants. 

There’s a huff from a few feet away, like someone sighing. Is it Felix? The lady? Jisung doesn’t look. He stares ahead, watching the cars rush through the mist.

When the bus arrives, its green exterior gleaming with perspiration, Jisung can see figures behind nearly every darkened window. It looks full. There’s little chance of him getting a seat, like always. 

He risks a glance at Felix. The boy’s face is neutral. He’s biting the edge of his lip, his nails lightly tapping against his phone case as he stares up at the bus. 

The woman gets on first, then Felix, then Jisung. The bus smells faintly like sweat, a two dozen stony adult faces staring back at him from seats or standing positions alike. Jisung scans his transit card then grabs the overhead bar about halfway down the length of the bus, where it isn’t quite as crowded. Jisung feels someone’s arm brush his, and he turns around. 

It’s Felix. Somehow, Jisung stood next to him without noticing. They make eye contact; Felix is frowning. He pulls his arm away jerkily. 

Jisung’s heart rate accelerates. _What if he thinks I’m following him or something? He doesn’t know this is my route!_

“So, uh, where do you get off? My stop is at ----- station,” Jisung says awkwardly. 

Felix pauses, his eyes widening slightly. “That’s my stop, too.” 

Jisung takes a breath. “Look, I’m sorry about-”

“Whatever, Jisung,” Felix says shortly. “I don’t care.” He turns away, as if to discourage further conversation, and Jisung, reading between the lines, doesn’t make any further attempts. They don’t talk- not on the bus ride, nor the short walk to the subway line, which they walk almost comically separate. And at the tracks, Felix disappears into the crowd. 

Jisung can’t help but notice, however, that no matter what Felix might have said, it sounded like he very much did care. And if this was the same Felix, Jisung suspected he rather cared a lot. 

That night, alone in his bedroom, Jisung stares at his ceiling for hours, trying to sleep. He keeps reliving the events of the day, over and over again, like a broken record. Seungmin and Changbin laughing with him. Felix’s face crestfallen, when Jisung essentially told him to fuck off. And Hyunjin’s face, that moment Jisung first saw Felix: a mask of emotions Jisung couldn’t recognize. 

_What if he’d kept his mouth shut? What if Felix hates him? What if, what if, what if?_

Jisung doesn’t sleep until the early hours of the morning, but when he does, he dreams of a heap of broken images, of skin against skin and skin against lips and running his hands through a head of hair softer than moonbeams. He dreams of someone whispering his name into his ear before breaking off laughing, of sand under his nails and somehow worked into his scalp, of eyes dark like stars, an endless expanse of tanned skin, of soft breath on his lips. 

When he wakes, he can feel the desire in his chest, as heavy as a rock, and when he realizes he is no longer dreaming the resulting sadness is almost tangible. It is the first time he’s dreamed in nearly two weeks, and he wants the dream so badly to be real that he’s almost breathless.

The dream world leaves cobwebs in his brain, little snatches of the night’s contents that come up at surprise moments during the following day. The chilled morning feels like breath on his skin; the rough fabric of his wool school sweater like the sand pressed beneath his hands.

So Jisung takes an earlier bus, to avoid seeing Felix. He isn’t thirteen anymore, and dreams like the one last night don’t choke him up with shame like they used to- rather, quite the opposite. But all the same, he can’t make himself face the other boy just yet. Not when the day has yet to clear away the cobwebs.

And he’s right. The entire commute, his dream lingers in the edges of his memory. 

For the rest of Tuesday, Felix and Jisung don’t talk.

On Wednesday, they still don’t talk. In fact, Jisung begins to suspect Felix is going out of his way to avoid him, and it hurts a lot more than he’s willing to admit out loud. 

On Thursday, they’re assigned by chance to the same math review group. It is startlingly awkward, so much so that one of their other group members, a boy named Jeongin, takes Jisung aside later and asks very innocently if they’re fighting. Jeongin notes curiously that Felix seems unable to look him in the eye. 

That night, Jisung prays desperately for a dream, a chance to make things right, and he wakes after five hours of disappointed blackness.

When Friday morning finally comes around, Jisung feels like the school week’s been going on for an eternity. 

The school bell rings, signaling the start of homeroom. From the front of the class, Mr. Kim clears his throat, smiling broadly. 

“I know you all are very excited for the class trip next week and anxious to find out your group assignments. But before I give you your groups-” 

Mr. Kim is immediately cut off by an outburst of chatter. A large group of girls near the front turns to one another excitedly, paying the teacher no heed. 

From beside him, Seungmin nudges him. “You turned in your permission slip, right?”

Jisung blinks. He’d been frustratingly close to falling asleep, Seungmin’s jostle waking him up from his stupor. “My-” He pauses, suddenly remembering what day it is. “Oh, shit. Groups are announced _today?”_

Every year, the school funds a three-day trip to Busan for its juniors and seniors. Originally intended to supplement preparation for the earth science and geography sections of the college entrance exam, it’s now a chance for the overwrought students to relax and spend time with their friends while going on various “educational” outings to various tourist locations. The only pitfall is that students are assigned walking groups, which they have to stay by at all times or else face serious consequences. Jisung has heard from older students that while students are encouraged to fill out a group request form, the homeroom teacher can basically do whatever they want. 

And so it’s Friday, specifically the Friday before the trip. Jisung vaguely remembers Mr. Kim promising to reveal their assigned groups on - some day? Probably today? 

Meanwhile, Mr. Kim successfully quiets down the class with an uncharacteristic glare. 

“As I was saying…” He pauses. “I realize that you all want to be paired with your friends, so I worked hard to balance what you want and what the class needs. I’d like to first remind you that this trip, in addition to being educational, is about bringing our school community together.”

Jisung has a bad feeling about this.

“That being said,” Mr. Kim smiles, “Boys’ group one is… Han Jisung, Hwang Hyunjin, Kim Seungmin, and Lee Daehwi.” He looks up from his notes. “Please keep in mind that roommate pairs and trios for the hotel are assigned alphabetically.”

Jisung can’t help it. He raises his hand. “You’ve got to be joking. I can’t room with him.” 

There’s a smattering of laughter. 

Mr. Kim frowns a little. “If that’s a problem, you can talk to me after homeroom. But let’s keep going. Next, boys’ group two! Ahn Jaewoo, Lee Jeno... ”

Jisung tunes him out. He turns in his seat to look at Seungmin, his eyebrows raised. They look at each other for a long moment. 

Seungmin shakes his head, eyes wide, then whispers, “Mr. Kim is playing with fire.” 

“You’re telling me,” Jisung shoots back quietly. “I’m screwed.”

“It could be worse, you know. We could have-” Seungmin stops suddenly. Mr. Kim has materialized next to their desk group, looking concernedly over at Felix and Hyunjin. Felix is in the middle of lowering his raised hand.

“Yes, Felix?” Mr. Kim says. “What is it?” Jisung notices that he has a coffee stain on his white collared shirt, half-hidden by his black wool sweater.

Felix blinks awkwardly up at the teacher. “All the boys have their groups already. I turned in the permission slip, but I don’t have a group.”

“Oh!” The teacher pauses. “Well, you can join Hyunjin’s group, then.” He shuffles his notes. “Since you’re later in the alphabet, you’ll have a roommate trio, with-” he checks his notes “-Seungmin and Daehwi.” He smiles like it’s settled, then walks back to the front of the classroom. 

From beside Jisung, Seungmin lets out a long breath, trapped by his teeth. He makes a strangled sound, like an incredulous laugh, but it’s partially masked by an excited squeal further up the aisle. Mr. Kim’s voice drones on: he must have announced the first girl’s group.

Jisung shoves him, but without force. “You jinxed it, Minnie,” he accuses under his breath. “What were you saying before? That we could have...” He trails off, feeling eyes boring into his back, remembering that Hyunjin and Felix sit only three feet away.

Seungmin, however, doesn’t seem to notice. “Oops,” He replies, somewhat unapologetically. “At least you get to see your-”

“Oh, would you look at the time!” Jisung says loudly. “We should be reviewing our homework from yesterday by now. Homeroom ends in five minutes. Minnie, did you do the homework?” He risks a glance to the left, and makes eye contact with Felix, who looks directly at him, his gaze complicated. Jisung recognizes that gaze, though he’s never been able to decipher it.

Jisung turns back to his seatmate, feeling heat creep up his neck and across his cheeks. He takes a shaky breath.

Seungmin gives him a strange look, but doesn’t press the matter. “Obviously, Sungie. The question is, did _you_ do the homework?”

“No,” Jisung confesses. Last night, Jisung had been so distracted by the day’s awkwardness in the math review group with Felix that he’d been unable to focus. Instead, he’d played Call of Duty for a while after school before settling into his endless hours of distressed attempts at sleep. “I was, uh, busy.”

Seungmin snorts. “Yeah, busy dreaming of-”

Jisung elbows him, hard enough that Seungmin lets out a startled oof. Then he looks to the left, where Hyunjin and Felix sit, and his eyes widen. “Oh, oops,” he whispers. But he doesn’t look away for a long moment, and when he finally does, he’s blushing.

Jisung frowns. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” Seungmin stammers. The blush paints itself across his cheeks like a bright sunset, stark against the light pallor of his skin. He looks more startled than Jisung has ever seen him.

He’s handsome, Jisung notices. But then again, Seungmin is always handsome. 

Jisung will never be interested in Seungmin that way- they’re too close, with too many years of comfortable friendship behind them. They’ll always only ever be friends, and Jisung would never want anything else. But that being said, sometimes, without meaning to, Jisung _notices._

Jisung frowns in response to Seungmin’s stammer and glances at their neighbors curiously. Hyunjin and Felix have their heads together, hiding smiles focused on something between their desks. There, Jisung can see the blue glow of a phone, clutched between Hyunjin’s long hands. They’re clearly occupied.

Felix laughs, short and surprised, and Jisung’s breath catches. He wants… he doesn’t know what he wants. Maybe to catch that laugh, that startled happiness, and put it in a bottle. Maybe to take _this_ Felix, the one he remembers from his dreams, with a wide smile and bright, innocent eyes, and carve him into his memory, to wash out his new concept of Felix - if it really Felix - distant and neutral. Jisung’s palms itch suddenly, like they’re inlaid with sand, even though he knows they’re perfectly clean. 

But then Felix looks up and sees him staring and the illusion is abruptly broken. 

After homeroom, Jisung and Hyunjin approach Mr. Kim. Hyunjin has an ugly scowl on his face, one that he’s very poorly trying to hide in order to be polite. Jisung suspects his own expression is mirroring Hyunjin’s. 

“Mr. Kim, we can’t be roommates,” Hyunjin bursts out, when they’re barely at the desk. Jisung follows him, feeling himself nod. It’s probably the only thing they’ve agreed on in years. 

From behind them, the murmur of the class quiets to a hum, like they’re expecting a show. 

“Mr. Kim, he’ll murder me in my sleep,” Jisung says as politely as he can manage. “I don’t want to die. I’m too young.”

A girl snickers.

Mr. Kim raises his eyebrows. He doesn’t immediately reply, and he shoots a glance at the desks behind them. “You’ve got a smart mouth, Han Jisung.”

It’s true. Jisung can’t object.

“He’s so annoying I might actually throw myself out the hotel window,” Hyunjin cuts in, excessively seriously. “I can barely stand him as it is.” Hyunjin’s always been dramatic, Jisung knows. He used to find it funny; now it bothers him to no end. 

“Well, the feeling is mutual,” Jisung adds. “In fact, I might help him out that window. Encourage him a bit, you know.” He realizes it’s too harsh seconds after he’s said it.

“Jisung!” Hyunjin hisses. As a response, Jisung elbows him hard, earning himself a swift kick to the back of the knee. Jisung has to grab the nearest desk to keep himself from collapsing.

Mr. Kim looks both weary and annoyed at once. “Enough,” he says forcefully, somehow meeting both sets of eyes. “Before I have to send you both to the dean. Or suspend you.”

They stop. Mr. Kim is rarely this serious. 

Jisung notes that the class has grown silent. The tension in the room is almost tangible.

Mr. Kim looks down at the ground, his mouth furrowed in deep thought. Finally, he looks up, his eyebrows low over his eyes. “I admit I may have misjudged you, boys. I thought you were mature enough to settle your differences.”

Hyunjin looks like he wants to say something, but he quickly looks down after meeting Mr. Kim’s gaze. 

“Fine, then,” Mr. Kim says, and his tone discourages further objections. “Hyunjin, you’ll switch room assignments with Felix. You’ll be roommates with Seungmin and Daehwi instead. And if you two can't even handle being in the same walking group together, we’ll have words, possibly with your parents. Are we clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Hyunjin says immediately, returning to his desk. 

Jisung, though, lingers a moment. He shuffles his feet, hearing the hum of conversation rear up again before he speaks. “Sir, that makes me roommates with Felix.”

“Yes, it does,” Mr. Kim responds, his voice uncharacteristically hard. “Will that be a problem?”

Jisung feels eyes on his back, and fights the urge to turn around. He remembers rough hands, a constellation of freckles, and these words: _I’m moving to Korea._ He thinks about the awkwardness yesterday, how it kept him awake nearly all night. And in the back of his mind, he remembers sand under his palms, soft lips and a sky full of stars. A question, burrowing in the edges of his consciousness.

“No,” Jisung says slowly, feeling his heart sink. “No, not at all.”

\-----

Jisung spends the next six days utterly dreading the upcoming trip. Even when Changbin excitedly shares that a surplus of students in his homeroom end resulted in him being paired with a group in the neighboring class and somehow roommates with Minho, his work crush, Jisung can only muster up partial enthusiasm. Each day crawls by like a cat stalking its prey: achingly slowly. 

The night before the trip, while searching for his bathing suit in the deepest recesses of his wardrobe, he dislodges his old journals, stacked against the back end and caked with dust. His bathing suit has somehow gotten caught on a nail right by the stack, and in his attempt to carefully pull it away, he places his hand on the stack and sends it sliding into his room. 

Jisung leans back, coughing on the dust now rising up from the sliding pile. The top journal flutters open at his feet. 

He picks it up warily. The first page is dated five years prior, when Jisung was twelve, the last year he kept up a diary before the chaos of growing up made him lose interest. In scrawling, undeveloped handwriting, twelve-year-old Jisung had written out at the top of the page: _Dear Diary, I want to tell you something: I like Felix a lot. He always tries his best, and he’s the best friend I have, besides Hyunjinnie. I want to stay by his side forever._

For some reason, Jisung feels anger begin to rise up his throat, along with a deep, base urge to throw his diary against a wall, to rip it into pieces, to throw it in the trash so he can never find it again. He wants to scream. To yell, to punch the wardrobe and all the whispering memories it contains. 

There is a long moment.

But ultimately, he doesn’t do any of that. Instead, he calmly rearranges his journals in the shadows of the wardrobe and picks up his swimsuit from the floor. There’s a long tear running down the side. If he wore it, it would certainly expose skin that wasn’t supposed to be exposed.

Jisung clenches his teeth, grinding them together for a few moments before he remembers that it’s bad for them. “Fuck,” he whispers. The frustration pounds in his veins. His hands itch, and he rubs them against each other absently. 

But then something hits his foot, light, like a wash of tiny pebbles.

His heart stops. Slowly, he looks down at his hands. 

They’re covered with sand. 

Jisung almost panics, but then he remembers that he’s holding a used bathing suit. He shakes the swim trunks. When a light dusting of sand trickles out, he takes a long, shaky breath.

Then he calls out as calmly as he can muster: “Hey Mom, can you sew something up for me?”

That night, it takes him forever to fall asleep, but when he does, he doesn’t dream. 

When Jisung arrives at school the next morning, his overnight bag in tow, he feels like he’s about to jump out of his skin. He missed his bus, though, earlier that morning, and therefore missed Felix. And luckily, Mr. Kim isn’t requiring roommates to sit together, only groupmates. Since Seungmin is in the same group, the two best friends decided the previous night over kakaotalk to be seatmates on the five-hour bus ride down to Busan. 

Jisung rolls up to the express bus idling in the school parking lot. It’s almost 7:30, making him late if this had been any other day. What looks like the entire junior class (the seniors take a different bus) is grouped around the exterior, Mr. Kim and the haggard-looking other junior class teacher yelling out attendance. The sides of the bus are open, revealing stacks and stacks of suitcases and duffel bags. A man in a uniform stands by the luggage, blinking boredly into nothing.

When Jisung hands off his luggage to the bus driver and joins Seungmin in the crowd, Mr. Kim has just finished attendance. 

“So the only person late is Han Jisung,” Mr. Kim confirms, his voice low with tiredness. “As always.”

Jisung blinks. He raises his hand, feeling an apologetic grimace spread across his face. “Uh, sir..” 

Seungmin, standing off to Jisung’s right, coughs loudly, but it might have been a laugh. Somewhere in the group, he hears someone actually laugh, the voice deep and likely male.

Mr. Kim whips around, then makes eye contact with Jisung, still frowning. “Oh, you’re here,” he says unenthusiastically. Then, louder, “Mrs. Lee, we’re all here.”

The other teacher, Mrs. Lee, responds with something similar. They begin loading onto the bus. “Remember to sit with your groups!” Mr. Kim calls after them. 

“Yeah, Sungie, sit with your group,” Seungmin says under his breath, nudging Jisung. “Can you imagine if we had to sit with our roommates? I mean, personally, I have nothing against Hyunjin or Daehwi, but you-”

“Shut up,” Jisung says, but without rancor. “Before I push you into the bus.” He pauses. “Wait, what do you mean, you have nothing against Hyunjin? Where’s the loyalty...” He’s kind of joking. Kind of.

Seungmin shrugs. “I don’t know, he’s always seemed like a nice guy. I know you have a history, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be nice to him back.” 

Seungmin is always nice to people. That’s the reason Jisung became friends with him in the first place- because he’s undeniably _good._ He’s a rule-follower. He’s kind and shy and careful. He’s nothing like Hyunjin.

“Minnie, he’s a demon,” Jisung replies hotly. “You shouldn’t be associating with pure evil, it’ll corrupt you.”

Seungmin looks like he wants to say something, his face momentarily going dark, then he visibly stops himself. 

“What?” 

“It’s just-” Seungmin sighs, a tired smile spreading across his face. “He’s not a demon, Sungie. You think he’s hot, is all. You don’t have to be mean to the people you’ve had a crush on.” It’s a bold thing to say in the middle of a swarm of classmates, and Seungmin seems to realize this a moment after he says it.

From behind them in line, someone starts to choke, hard enough that Jisung hears a thump as they’re pounded on the back.

Jisung can feel his face going hot. He knows it before he even looks. He knows it just based on Seungmin’s face as soon as the other boy turns around to check. His best friend is grimacing, his face a wash of pink, avoiding Jisung’s eyes. 

He turns. And it’s Hwang Hyunjin, an open water bottle in one hand. His face is bright red, eyes wide as the stars. He’s staring straight at Jisung, his face slack with shock. 

“Jisung,” Hyunjin manages, his voice a croak. He momentarily pauses to break into another coughing fit, doubling over into his elbow. He straightens, and their eyes meet. “Jisung, what the _fuck.”_

Jisung doesn’t look at Seungmin. He wants to run. Away. Far away. His pulse is a quick drum, leading his thoughts astray. 

He takes a short breath. He won’t let the fear swallow him. He needs to distract himself, but he can’t be around Seungmin. Not right now.

Jisung looks appraisingly at the boy who was pounding Hyunjin’s back. It’s Daehwi, if Jisung remembers correctly, a shy yet somehow popular boy in Hyunjin’s entourage. He and Daehwi are in the same walking group, and the boy should be rooming with Hyunjin and Seungmin. 

Jisung sees Felix’s outline on the other side of Hyunjin, but since they’re ignoring each other, he doesn’t look directly at him.

“You don’t have a partner, right? For the bus?”

Daehwi shakes his head, frowning in confusion. He’s tall-ish: taller than Jisung, but not quite Hyunjin’s size. Either way, Jisung has to look up to meet his eyes. “Yeah, but why-”

“Want to be my partner, then?”

He blinks - once, twice - then smiles politely. “Oh, uh, sure, I guess?”

Jisung will take it. He steps out of line, pushing Hyunjin bodily ahead of him. Felix trails after Hyunjin. 

“Sungie-” Seungmin calls, his voice tight. He grabs at Jisung’s shoulder. “Jisung, I-”

Jisung still doesn’t look. He shakes off his friend, smiling brightly at Daehwi. “So, partner, tell me about yourself.” His chest is tight, like a band is drawn across it, and a lump forms in his lower throat.

Daehwi, a properly confused smile drawn across his face, does.

\------

Daehwi and Jisung talk for close to three hours. At first, it’s incredibly awkward- Jisung’s strained from his confrontation, and Daehwi seems to simply be humouring him. But after close to an hour of peppered silence, Daehwi divulges, lowland rice paddies racing by outside the window, that he came out as gay to Hyunjin several years ago. He assures Jisung that Hyunjin won’t tell anyone.

The ice breaks, and from there, they can’t stop talking. It turns out they have a lot in common- a shared hatred for math, passion for music, and dislike for Hyunjin’s dramatics. Daehwi talks about his love for singing, his desire to go to university for music composition. And Jisung, startled, tells him about his projects, the songs hidden away in the depths of his computer for a day when he can let them see the light.

By the end of the trip, it’s past noon, and something buzzing all morning in Jisung’s core has temporarily settled. 

When the bus settles into the hotel parking lot, the sound of fifty students’ chattering still roars low in the background. Daehwi sticks out a hand, a genuine smile across his face. “Friends?”

“Friends,” Jisung affirms, grinning back. He takes Daehwi’s hand and shakes it. “Even though you’re friends with _him._ ”

Daehwi rolls his eyes. “Whatever, Jisung. He’s not all that bad, you know.” He drops the subject, though, once he meets Jisung’s gaze. “Anyway, see you later? I’m gonna go talk to Jinnie about the room assignment.”

“Yeah, of course,” Jisung responds easily. “Go.”

Daehwi slips out of his seat. Jisung hears the murmurings of quiet conversation in the row ahead of him. Felix’s voice gravels a reply: “Yeah, sure.”

Then Felix slips into the seat beside him. 

For a moment, they simply stare at each other. Felix’s face is a little pink, and he blinks awkwardly. He opens his mouth, then closes it. He’s wearing an expression Jisung has never seen before: a mixture of embarrassment, curiosity, and something Jisung can’t place. He has never been further from Jisung’s Felix than at this moment.

An awful suspicion nudges at Jisung’s heart. Felix must have heard Seungmin earlier: why else would he be - like this?

He swallows, trying to remove an awful taste that springs up in his mouth. “If you came here to say something, get it over with.”

Felix shakes his head, his eyes widening. “No, uh, Mr. Kim said to sit with your roommate. They’re handing out the room keys up front. And...” He pauses, then takes an awkward breath. “Um, I don’t care. About. Uh, you know. I don’t care about it. It doesn’t matter to me. I know you don’t like me, but I wanted you to know.” He turns towards the aisle, effectively cutting off further conversation, but not before Jisung catches a dapple of pink spreading across his cheeks. 

Jisung, meanwhile, feels like he’s just stepped off a rollercoaster. After a moment, he says, “you think I don’t like you?” 

“Don’t you?” Felix says without looking at him. He’s leaning forward, watching Mr. Kim announce the room assignments from around the left side of the seat in front of him. 

“I- no,” Jisung replies slowly. He feels like he’s in a dream- the wrong, vague kind. “No, I- I like you.”

Felix doesn’t reply immediately. But when he does, all he says is “oh.”

“You’re a light sleeper, right?” Jisung says quickly, before he can stop himself.

Felix stares at him. “What are you talking about?”

Jisung wishes the bus could swallow him up.

After they bring their luggage up to the hotel, the rest of the afternoon is devoted to visiting tourist locations around Busan. Thankfully, the afternoon is spent with their classes, not just their walking groups, so Jisung doesn’t have to look Hyunjin, Seungmin, or Felix in the eye. Daehwi seems to take pity on him, and they spend a few hours cracking jokes as an overly enthusiastic twenty-something guide points out interesting architectural features in the old district to their group of nearly thirty bored seventeen-year-olds. 

Throughout the afternoon, Felix and Seungmin seem glued to Hyunjin’s side. He catches the end tails of their laughter without meaning to. They walk a few paces ahead of him and Daehwi for the majority of the tour, and Seungmin keeps looking back at Jisung, his mouth ajar like he’s about to say something. And Felix doesn’t look back at all. 

Once, a few years ago, Jisung and Felix made a promise: if they ever found each other, they’d have a secret signal, a sort of test so they knew it was really them. It went like this:

_“You’re a light sleeper, right?”_

__

__

_“I would be, if it wasn’t for the dreams.”_

It was simple: innocuous enough that passerby wouldn’t think anything of it, yet specific enough that they would know each other. A little test. A test Felix has just failed miserably.

Jisung is starting to think with a shock of embarrassment that he might have blown this out of proportion. Maybe this Felix is just a regular boy from Australia, who just happens to look like - that Felix. Jisung has always had an active imagination- that Felix is probably just a dream.

It becomes his mantra, throughout the walk: _just a dream._ It’s like a meditation: _just a dream._ Jisung was living a dream. Now, it’s just time for him to wake up. 

He must have just read a bunch of Wikipedia articles about Australia, once, without realizing it. He must have seen photos of Bondi Beach when he was really little, and it must have stuck with him. He must just have an unusually good memory. Coincidences happen. Coincidences happen. Coincidences happen. 

Felix probably isn’t real. He’s just blown this out of proportion. All he’s done is hurt the feelings of a random Australian boy. Not the probably pretend boy he’s been in love with since he was fifteen. Since he was twelve. Since he was eight. _Really, since as long as I can remember._

It makes Jisung feel like crying, right there in the middle of his classmates. He wants to be comforted by the thought, but it’s anything but comforting.

Someone’s shaking his shoulder, and Jisung looks over to see Daehwi frowning at him concernedly. “Uh, are you okay? You stopped responding.”

Jisung blinks, then forces his lips into a smile. “Yeah, of course. I’m fine. Uh-” he looks around “-what are we doing?” The tour seems to be over, with the guide nowhere in sight. Half the students are missing, too, including the other boy’s group with Jeongin and Jeno.

Daehwi grimaces. “Uh, Mr. Kim wants us to get dinner with our walking groups. He already gave the money to Jinnie, we should catch up.”

Jisung looks directly ahead of them. He doesn’t know how he missed them before; Hyunjin, Seungmin, and Felix are standing in a group not less than ten feet away, discussing something between themselves.

They spend the day walking to tourist shops in the commercial district of Busan. Daehwi takes pity on Jisung and spends almost half the time talking to him. Hyunjin, Seungmin, and Felix stay in their little group, always less than a foot away, though to Jisung it feels like miles. The days crawls by. 

Finally, around dusk, they get a text from Mr. Kim reminding them to get dinner before they’re expected back. The boys confer awkwardly between themselves for a few minutes then crowd into a nearby pizza parlor, the bright neon sign outside the door probably visible from space. 

Daehwi jets off to the restroom as soon as they get a booth. Hyunjin promises to save him a spot next to Felix and him, so Jisung is forced to slide awkwardly into the seat next to Seungmin. 

Hyunjin nudges Felix, who’s sitting beside him, then mutters something under his breath. His eyes flick up; Jisung meets them briefly. Felix laughs, brief and low in his chest. 

An indiscernible feeling, a cousin to the anger Jisung felt last night while reading the journal, unfurls in his veins. He clears his throat. 

Hyunjin keeps whispering. Jisung feels Seungmin shift from beside him.

Jisung bites his lip. He doesn’t want to… He doesn’t want… He gives in. “Hey, what’s your problem?”

Felix startles, like he hadn’t been paying attention. When he sees Jisung’s expression, he quietly pulls out his phone and starts scrolling. 

The lights of the restaurant buzz around them, bright as neon. Hyunjin’s eyes are bright with an emotion Jisung doesn’t want to recognize. 

Hyunjin bares his teeth in a semblance of a smile. “What?” He asks. His teeth flash. 

“I said, do you have a problem with me? You can’t just ignore me for the next two days. Fucking talk to me.”

The table seems frozen, Felix especially, who is staring at his phone with wide, wide eyes. No one moves. Jisung glances at Seungmin, who stares blankly down. His fingers tap once, twice, three times on the shiny oak of the table, than is still. 

Jisung shifts in his seat, feeling his shoulders tense up, then leans forward. “Can you hear? I asked you a question.”

Hyunjin swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing briefly, and pushes his messy, messy hair out of his eyes. This is the first time Jisung gets a good look at him all day, and he notices the other boy’s tie is askew. He’s shed his school jacket at some point, and his muscles brace against the thin fabric of his dress shirt. A necklace chain disappears down his collar. 

Hyunjin glances quickly to the side, at Felix, who is scrolling through what looks like a Twitter feed, and then at Seungmin, lingering for a moment before returning his gaze to Jisung. It almost immediately flitters away, like it’s ricocheting off an object. 

“No, I don’t have a problem. Not in the way you think,” Hyunjin says finally. 

Jisung frowns. “Oh, really?” But what he really wants to say is, Then why do you look like you do? _Ignoring me._

Hyunjin swallows again, but he finally meets Jisung’s gaze with his steady dark eyes. “I meant it.”

Jisung leans forward, blinking in confusion. “Uh, what?”

“I meant it,” Hyunjin says slowly, like Jisung can’t hear properly. “That day. When you cursed me out. When we stopped being friends.” His forehead looks a little damp, like he’s sweating. He removes his arms from the table, then puts them back, then just as quickly removes them. 

Jisung, nonplussed, searches his memory.

“What I said,” Hyunjin prompts. 

“Oh,” Jisung said, feeling it dawn on him. “When you said…” When you said you loved me. “Yeah, I’m sure you did. What does that have to do with anything?”

“If you have to ask, then you don’t,” Hyunjin replies lowly. “You don’t know at all.” He pauses. “Think about it a little. I’m sure your tiny brain will figure it out eventually.”

Jisung doesn’t respond. He’s too busy wondering at his own stupidity. Hyunjin never did say the word _platonically._

Seungmin lets out a heavy breath from beside Jisung, like he’s been running. “What…” he starts hesitantly. “What’s going on?”

“Hey, don’t ask,” Hyunjin says, breaking into a tight smile. “Long story.”

“Hyunjin,” Jisung says, before he can stop himself. He barely registers Hyunjin’s words. He thinks he knows, but he has to confirm. That this is what Hyunjin means. That he means he was in love with Jisung- not platonically, like Jisung assumed. But for real. “Hyunjin, please tell me you’re joking.”

“The pot calling the kettle black,” Hyunjin replies flippantly. “Nice, Han.” Jisung remembers Hyunjin’s own statement earlier that day, as they were loading onto the bus, and belatedly realizes he’s mirrored it. 

“Why?” Jisung whispers, still staring into Hyunjin’s eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I did, Han,” Hyunjin says, his eyes turning dark. His voice is hard as iron, though his bright, bright eyes belie the attempt at neutrality. “But we all know how well that turned out.”

He hears Seungmin let out a little gasp, like he’s realized what Hyunjin means. 

“Oh,” Jisung replies after a breath. “I…” He trails off. Everything Jisung has ever known about Hyunjin reshapes itself in his head. 

Hyunjin was in love with him… for real?

Hyunjin lets out a short, humourless laugh, and Jisung notices his eyes have turned wet with the beginnings of tears. “I... uh….” He looks at a loss. 

His gaze hardens, properly this time. “Don’t try to follow me.” And then he gets up, throws his phone on the table, and leaves the cafe, letting the door slam behind him. 

Jisung looks over, where Felix is sitting. The boy’s eyes are wide, like a deer in headlights, and he’s visibly sweating. 

“Go after him,” Jisung says tiredly. “Please. Make sure you have your phone, so we don’t all get murdered by Mr. Kim.”

He doesn’t have to tell Felix twice. The boy rockets out of the booth and disappears into the night.

\------

When Daehwi returns from the bathroom, he seems to understand immediately. 

“Shit,” he groans softly, sliding into the end seat. “Hyunjin said he wasn’t going to tell you. He doesn’t _still_ like you, you know.”

“Well, it’s mutual.” Jisung feels his eyes widen. “Wait, you knew?”

Daehwi tilts his head and gives Jisung a Look that says, _how could I not?_ “Hyunjin is...” he starts with a sigh. “He’s not…”

“He’s not good at hiding things,” Jisung fills in for him. “Yeah, I know.” A thought occurs to him. “If you knew what happened, what I said, why are you being nice to me?”

Daehwi shrugs. “I don’t know, actually. I guess it seemed like you needed it.”

Jisung grimaces. “Fair.”

“Uh, so,” Seungmin says quietly, “Anyone want pizza?”

“Yes,” Jisung replies, smiling a little. He feels some of the tension leave his shoulders. “Yes, definitely.”

And somehow, over fifteen dollars’ worth of cheap pizza and several hours of conversation, Jisung’s uncomfortable feeling begins to fade. He almost forgets about Felix and Hyunjin, just talking with both new and old friends over a mountain of cheese. 

The walk back to the hotel isn’t especially long. Once the looming black glass of the hotel comes into view, Seungmin pulls Jisung aside, motioning Daehwi on.

“Sungie…” Seungmin starts. His eyes are a little red, Jisung notices through the gritty grey of the evening. He’s never seen Seungmin cry before in the four years he’s known him, and the thought sends a shock through his veins. 

Seungmin grasps Jisung’s hand. “I’m so sorry. I outed you, like the biggest fucking jerk. I don’t know what I was thinking, talking about that on school grounds. I know nothing will ever make it better, but…” He pauses, then looks over Jisung’s shoulder, like he can’t meet his friend’s eyes. “Will you let me try?”

“Yeah, uh,” Jisung says. He feels a sob bubble up in his throat. He swallows it down. “Yeah, I think so.” 

He missed Seungmin. A lot.

“Okay,” Seungmin whispers, a tentative smile breaking out across his face. “Okay, cool.”

“I thought you were going to leave me for Hwang Hyunjin,” Jisung says, his voice wobbly. 

“Sungie, I thought you wanted me to. I’m so sorry.” Seungmin’s face is wet, his eyelashes winking with water. “Ah, I’m crying.”

“I know.” Jisung swallows. “And.. uh.. I’m sorry for being possessive.”

“Thanks for apologizing,” Seungmin replies quietly. “When it’s not the same. I… Can we be friends again?”

“Yeah.”

“So,” Seungmin says immediately, “About Hyunjin-”

“I know! I just- just- how was I supposed to know back then that he was being honest?”

When they turn the corner to the hotel parking lot, they’re greeted with the faint sound of yelling that only grows louder as they approach the building. Jisung scans the parking lot. It takes less than a millisecond to find the source: a group of teenage boys, their school uniforms in various levels of disarray, are clamored together in the corner of the parking lot, playing some type of sport.

Mr. Kim greets them in the parking lot with a bright smile, holding a clipboard and pen. “Seungmin and Jisung, good. You’re the last ones. You should join the other boys, I’m sure they’d love another player.”

Seungmin blinks. “What do you mean?”

Mr. Kim gestures behind him vaguely. “Jeno brought a soccer ball. There’s a game going on over there, in the corner of the lot.”

Jisung looks off to the left. From here, the group of boys aren’t that far off. He sees Hyunjin in the fray, artfully dribbling the ball between his sneakers as he avoids the others. There’s sweat running down his temple. He’s both undone a few shirt buttons and rolled up his sleeves, revealing toned, white skin.

He looks so, so alive, a broad smile breaking across his face. Jeongin bumps him on the shoulder, wearing a similar grin. 

For a brief moment, Jisung imagines himself joining the other boys. Hyunjin’s face inevitably falling. The resulting awkwardness. His overall lack of motor coordination. 

Jisung doesn’t realize he’s shaking his head until he notices Mr. Kim’s expression. “Oh, uh, I’m allergic to sports.” He laughs awkwardly. 

Mr. Kim shrugs. “That’s your loss, I suppose. Seungmin?”

“I think I’m gonna join, if that’s okay with you?” He looks at Jisung in askance. 

“Yeah, go ahead. I’m going to go to my room.” Jisung waves him off. “Have a good night, Mr. Kim.”

“Uh, you, too, Jisung,” Mr. Kim says, barely concealing a startled expression. “Remember, curfew is at 10. No leaving your room after that!”

“Yes, sir!” Jisung salutes at him, then walks towards the hotel, the fluorescent light spilling out into the night from beyond the glass sliding doors. 

When Jisung finally gets to his room, his heart is pounding so hard he has to wait for a few minutes outside the room in order to steady his pulse. A few minutes later, he’s just contemplating whether or not to open the door when it swings open. 

Jisung startles. “What the…” 

Felix stands about a foot away, holding the door open. His collar is popped, his tie nowhere to be seen, and he’s unbuttoned the first button of his collared shirt, revealing a small triangle of tanned skin. His hair is spiky, like it’s wet. He smells strong, like cologne or a heady deodorant, like musk and pine and thorns. His brow is furrowed.

The sight of his small sliver of skin is so much more tantalizing to Jisung than Hyunjin’s acres of skin visible in the parking lot.

“What are you doing?”

“Uh..” Jisung tries to come up with a viable excuse and fails. All his attempts at calming himself were for naught: he can feel his pulse in his ears now. The sight of Felix, especially like this, makes his heart skip a beat. “What- what are you doing?” He says, feeling like a toddler for responding like that.

“Leaving,” Felix says, like it’s obvious. “Why were you standing in front of the door?”

“I was. Uh. Trying to get in. Obviously. Why are you leaving?”

Unexpectedly, Felix slightly blushes. He looks down at the floor. “Oh, uh, I was going to ask Daehwi if he knew how to turn on the shower. Since they’re a door down.”

“I can help,” Jisung says slowly, before he realizes what he’s doing. “Well, maybe. Maybe I can help.”

Felix shakes his head immediately, then tries to close the door on him. “No, it’s fine. Really.”

Jisung frowns. “Hey, what are you doing? I’m your roommate.”

“Oh. Right. Well, I guess you could try,” Felix says. He’s trying to be enthusiastic but he’s pulling it off unconvincingly. He opens the door a sliver more. 

There’s a few moments of waiting before Felix opens the door fully. 

Jisung shoulders past him and into the bathroom. He sees Felix’s tie lying on the sink countertop out of the corner of his eye. Luckily, he’s seen the shower configuration before, so it only takes seconds. He turns on the shower, then turns it off. “Do you need me to do that again, or did you get it?” He asks, turning around.

Felix is staring at him. 

“What?” Jisung asks self-consciously. 

Felix shakes his head. “Nothing. Uh, thanks, I guess.”

Jisung grimaces a smile. “No problem.” He shoulders his way past Felix, who’s standing in the doorway to the bathroom, and catches a heady whiff of cologne. His head spins as he goes to stand by the wall. 

“Hey, uh, why are you…” Jisung gestures to Felix’s clothes before he can close the bathroom door. “Uh, like this?” Immediately, he barely keeps himself from groaning. _Why are you like this? Nice one, Han._

Felix blinks at him, his hand clenched on the doorframe. He looks- Jisung isn’t sure. His expression is so, so familiar, but Jisung can’t quite identify it. There’s a pause, then Felix’s face clears.

“Oh, you mean my tie? I was playing soccer with Jinnie, so I didn’t want to wear it.”

“Oh.” Jisung doesn’t know what else to say, mostly because he can’t think. The scent of Felix’s cologne or deodorant lingers on his taste buds, sharp and potent, just as if he’s woken up from a dream seconds before. He knows what he’ll be dreaming of tonight, and the thought sends him an adrenaline bath of dread and galvanized shock. 

Felix smiles faintly at him. Then he closes the door.

Jisung turns out to be wrong. Felix is waiting for him when he falls asleep; not the Felix he’s gotten to know at school but the dream one, the one he spent nearly every night with for thirteen straight years.

They’re at school, in Jisung’s homeroom, but all the desks are piled against one wall and all the other students are gone. Early morning light flickers in through the far windows, the field far below them shining bright green against the sun. The dream sparks in his brain, imprinting itself into his memory like life.

Felix stands at the far end of the classroom. He’s wearing a school uniform Jisung immediately recognizes as belonging to his high school in Australia, with the dark green dress jacket and khaki-colored trousers. He stares at the floor. 

Jisung chokes on his breath. He wants so badly to be angry, but all he can feel is naked relief. 

Felix looks up. They stare at each other for a few moments, but moments easily become minutes. Jisung realizes he’s been smiling fondly much too late to change it. 

Finally, something foreign washes across Felix’s expression, and Jisung is so shocked that it takes him a few seconds to recognize the emotion. 

“Felix, don’t..” Jisung whispers, racing across the classroom. But it’s too late- Felix’s shoulders are already shaking, almost so subtly that if Jisung was someone else, if he wasn’t in love with this boy, he might not have noticed. There are no tears, only that expression, those subtle, racking movements. 

Jisung crosses the floor in seconds. He reaches for him, his heart pattering in his chest, and pulls him into a crushing hug. Felix’s body is warm, achingly tangible like he’s always been in dreams. Felix relaxes into him. 

_Where have you been?_ Jisung desperately wants to ask. _Where did you go for all those weeks? Why did you leave?_ But he’s so afraid Felix will disappear that he keeps silent, holding on tight like they’re seven again and he’s about to wake up.

When Felix’s shudders eventually quiet, he doesn’t immediately pull away. Jisung hears him murmur something under his breath into Jisung’s shirt, like he doesn’t quite want him to hear. 

“What?” Jisung says. 

Felix hesitates; Jisung can feel it. “I’m sorry, I… It’s just, I thought… never mind. Let’s go somewhere?” He smiles faintly, and it’s as real as anything. “I missed you, Sungie. More than I realized.”

“I missed you, too,” Jisung responds with a breath. 

They walk through the courtyard, then lay side by side in the grass and hold hands for what feels like hours, and they don’t talk for any of it. 

Felix’s hand is warm and rough, almost hyperreal, and Jisung’s heart sings: home, home, home. It’s like he’d forgotten how to breathe, and this dream is the exhale he’d been holding in his chest. It’s this, too: It’s like he’s holding sand in his hands, trying fruitlessly not to let it escape through his fingers. 

Before he knows it, he’s awake, his 7:30 alarm blaring in his ears. He can hear Felix muttering from his bed across the hotel room, but his words slur together with morning exhaustion and Jisung can’t tell for the life of him what Felix is saying. Probably to turn the fucking alarm off. 

Jisung lays in bed for a minute and lets the alarm blare. He can’t quite bear to get up yet, to face real Felix, lying just fifteen feet away. His heart murmurs the truth of it. There are two Felixes, and one is simply a coincidence, a blip in the matrix. The sooner he comes to terms with it, the easier it will be. 

He crawls out of bed through the dark and taps in his passcode, turning off the alarm with a mindless swipe. “Sorry, Felix,” he mutters. 

Felix mumbles something back, but it gets lost. Jisung tosses himself into bed with an audible thump.

At breakfast, the five boys sit at a round table in the hotel common area together, snacking lightly. The clatter of metal chopsticks against various plates and bowls fill the room as nearly seventy teenagers chatter their way through the first meal of the day, sitting in their pre-decided groups.

Jisung’s table, however, is noticeably silent. Hyunjin hasn’t said a word all morning, and Felix, who ate like lightning and is already done, stares down at his lap - probably on his phone. Every time poor Daehwi or Seungmin try to start a conversation, it peters out awkwardly. Jisung, who’s friendly with both of them now, can’t quite make himself join a conversation. Not when Hyunjin keeps looking at him like _that._

Hyunjin isn’t ignoring Jisung anymore, but Jisung almost wishes he were. Instead, Jisung keeps catching Hyunjin staring at him with an expression best described as angry and wounded. Hyunjin’s plate of food is almost untouched, though he keeps pushing it around his plate like he can mix up the rice and side dishes and somehow fool people into thinking he ate. 

Jisung can feel someone jittering the table, and it’s making him more and more annoyed as breakfast progresses. He suspects it’s Hyunjin, who can never sit still, but after the events of last night, he can’t bring himself to yell at the boy like he normally would. 

Suddenly, Felix coughs (if you could call it that), like he’s trying to cover up a laugh.

“What?” Hyunjin says. It’s the first time Jisung has heard him speak since their argument (if that’s what that was) last night, and the other boy’s voice is strangely hoarse, like he’s eating rocks. His chopsticks clatter to his plate, like he can’t wait to be rid of them.

Felix glances up from his lap, glancing at Hyunjin as his cheeks flush almost imperceptibly. “Oh, uh, just texting my brother.”

“You have a brother?” Daehwi asks, looking up from a soup spoon filled with stew. “Does he go to our school?”

Felix purses his lips. “Ah, no. He stayed in Australia. He goes to university there.”

“What’s his name?” Hyunjin asks curiously, his voice gravelling in his throat like he has a cold. Jisung notices for the first time that his eyes are a little bloodshot, his eyes puffy like he’s eaten too much ramen. 

“Chris,” Felix replies. “He’s twenty.”

Jisung, halfway through an unusually large sip of orange juice, chokes loudly. Seungmin, his eyes wide with surprise and humor, pounds him on the back. “Drink slower, you idiot,” he advises. 

Jisung, still coughing, gives his friend a sarcastic thumbs up. Meanwhile, though, his thoughts are whirling. _He has a brother named Chris? What are the chances of-_ Realizing where his thoughts are going, he steels himself. _Coincidence. Coincidence. Coincidence._

“So,” Daehwi says, swallowing down a mouthful of bean sprouts, “did you guys want to go to the beach before our natural sciences tour starts? Mr. Kim said it starts at 10:30, right? That gives us a good block of beach time.”

Felix grins. “Yeah! Let’s do it.” 

Hyunjin shrugs from beside him. “I don’t really care either way. Whatever you guys want to do.”

With two down, Daehwi turns to Jisung and Seungmin. “So…?” He raises his eyebrows. “What about you two?’

“It’s not like we have anything better to do,” Seungmin jokes, before Jisung can say anything. Seungmin, like Felix, is a fast eater, and his soup bowl is nearly empty, with just a few centimeters of broth swimming at the bottom of the bowl.

“Great!” Daehwi says. “I really wanted to see Haeundae Beach, my mom recommended it before we left. It’s like a five minute bus ride from here, right?” 

Haeundae… Jisung suddenly remembers his dream, the one his mom had to wake him up from. Little Felix screaming, him waking up to a face wet with tears. 

He doesn’t want to go there. Not in the slightest.

When no one responds immediately, Daehwi continues, “so I guess we could meet back at the front entrance at 8?” 

Jisung swallows. “Is there any other beach anyone wants to see? That one...” He feels bad finishing the statement, so he doesn’t, not when Daehwi and Felix seem so excited. But Haeundae Beach? The beach where he dreamed of the little Felix, screaming and screaming until all Jisung could do was collapse? That beach?

Hyunjin, who is always looking at Jisung now, seems to recognize something in Jisung’s expression, because he tilts his head a little after meeting the shorter boy’s eyes. Then, like the imp of the perverse has taken over, he tosses his head and says abruptly, “Nope. Not interested in any other beach. Let’s go there.” He stands up. “Seungmin, can I have the room key? I’ll start getting ready.”

Seungmin shrugs. “Sure, but it’s not like the three of us are still eating. We can go back up together.”

“Uh…” Daehwi flounders for a minute, looking with wide eyes at his half-full bowl of soup, then sighs. “Yeah, I guess.” He stands up, glancing at Felix. “See you guys in fifteen minutes, then?”

“Yeah,” Felix says brightly. “See you then.”

Haeundae Beach is exactly the way Jisung remembers it. The beach is almost a mile long and disappears out both sides of his vision. The sun beams bright overhead, warming up what could have been an otherwise chilly day. The beach is almost a mile long and disappears out both sides of his vision. 

As it is, it’s far too cold for swimming today, with some of the boys even wearing light jackets. Yet there are more than a few people patterning the beach, the light murmur of conversations dipping in and out of Jisung’s peripheral hearing. 

The only people wearing swimsuits on this part of the beach are Felix and Hyunjin, who stubbornly decided to swim in spite of the weather. They’re knee-deep in the surf, splashing each other gleefully in their t-shirts and swim trunks. Felix’s hair is pasted to his forehead, his eyes dancing with amusement. 

“Hwang Hyunjin!” He yells suddenly, startling a woman and her toddler walking nearby. His smile is as broad as the beach. “I challenge you to a duel!”

Hyunjin laughs, shaking water out of his hair as he readies himself in a fighting stance. “It’s on, bro.” 

Felix tackles him into the water, and Jisung has to look away before he starts smiling like a fool. 

Beside him, he hears Seungmin snort. “They won’t be laughing when they get hypothermia,” he says, his voice stern like he’s pretending to be annoyed. “What is it, 13 degrees Celsius today?”

Daehwi coughs from the other side of him. “That’s generous. More like 10 degrees.”

The three of them are sitting in a row, burying their feet in the sand. They’re about thirty feet from the surf, close enough to watch the shenanigans but far enough that the boys won’t try to pull them in. They may be fully clothed in jeans and t-shirts, Seungmin and Daehwi even wearing light jackets, but they know that’s no safeguard against Hwang Hyunjin in a good mood. 

And Hyunjin is, surprisingly enough, in a very good mood. Horsing around with Felix has improved his formerly dark expression dramatically, and they’ve only been at the beach for twenty minutes. Jisung shudders to think what might happen in the next hour.

“They kind of deserve it, though,” Jisung says finally. “Serves them right.”

Seungmin rolls his eyes. “I thought you were over hating Hyunjin.”

Jisung pushes him hard enough he bumps into Daehwi. “Shut up. I may not hate him, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s an idiot.”

There’s a loud splash as Hyunjin unceremoniously dumps Felix into the water. The boy looks off to Jisung’s left, then smiles wickedly. “You’re next,” he calls. He sprints out from the ocean, dripping water everywhere.

Daehwi yelps. He stands up and looks around quickly, like he’s looking for a place to hide, but he waits too long, and within seconds Hyunjin reaches the three of them. Hyunjin covers him in a very tight, very wet embrace, cackling all the while. 

Daehwi groans. “Fuck, man, you’re _cold._ ” A smile escapes like he was trying to stop it.

“Exactly,” Hyunjin says, his eyes dancing, clearly very amused. “That’s the point.” He grabs Daehwi’s shoulders tightly, then starts dragging him towards the surf. “Your turn.”

Daehwi starts laughing. “Wait, no- Jinnie-” He looks back at Seungmin and Jisung with wide eyes. “Wait, is this fair? Guys!”

Jisung shrugs, unable to hide his own grin. “Oh, well. Sucks for you.”

Seungmin smirks. “This way you can tell us if it’s as cold as it looks,” he calls. “It’s win-win.”

Daehwi doesn’t respond- he’s too busy laughing. Hyunjin is leaning his head against Daehwi’s, and it doesn’t escape Jisung how comfortable they are with each other. Daehwi has stopped struggling by now: he’s practically walking of his own free will.

Seungmin’s eyes follow them as they disappear down to the waterfront, a strange expression on his face. A few seconds later, Jisung watches Hyunjin pick up Daehwi bridal-style then drop him with a loud splash. 

Felix, who’s somehow managed to avoid detection until now, walks up to them with a grin. “Hey, can you guys do rock paper scissors for me?”

“What?” Seungmin asks. The expression slips off his face like water, replaced with a curious smile. “Why?”

“I need backup. Hyunjin’s got too much power,” Felix explains. “I want to dump him in the ocean. The loser of rock paper scissors has to help me.” He shakes out his hair with one hand, water splattering everywhere. With shock, Jisung realizes he’s wearing a white Skrillex t-shirt. The DJ’s icon is almost completely faded, which explains how he didn’t see it before. But it’s definitely a Skrillex logo. 

_Coincidence. Coincidence. Coincidence-_

“I’ll do it,” Jisung blurts out. “I wanna take Hyunjin down a peg.”

To his surprise, Felix smiles. “I figured. So, here’s the plan…”

They end up running fifty feet down the beach, so they can swim up to him undetected. 

It’s just as cold as he thought it would be, if not colder. The minute he races into the water, he can feel the freezing temperature beginning to turn his hands and feet stiff and numb. He shivers.

“Shit, Felix, it’s freezing,” Jisung complains, feeling his teeth chatter. He glances “You know what, I actually think I’m gonna…” He makes a move towards the shore. Out of the corner of his eye, in the distance, he can see Hyunjin and Daehwi roughhousing in the water. 

Felix lets out a short laugh, like he’s surprised, but he doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. 

Jisung grimaces, squinting at Felix’s face. “Oh, man, are you turning _purple?_ Yeah, I think maybe…”

“So what? It’s not like we’re going to die, or anything,” Felix says, shrugging, his eyes a little wide. He looks like he’s about to say something, but stops.

Jisung is hit with a wave of deja vu. He feels like he’s had this conversation before. Before he can say anything, though, Felix says, his voice rough and abrupt: “It’s like at Bondi, you know. Nothing to worry about.”

The world stops. 

“Repeat that for me?” Jisung says flatly. His brain is whirling at ten thousand miles an hour. He can’t think. He must have misheard.

“Nothing,” Felix says quickly, his cheeks turning bright red. “Let’s go now, I think Hyunjin’s leaving the water.”

“No, really, say that again. I could have sworn you said Bondi.” 

“You’re a light sleeper, right?” Felix whispers. 

Every limb on Jisung’s body is tingling, like it’s fallen asleep. The waves crash around his legs, the cold somehow steadying him. He thinks he might pass out, but he manages, his voice a croak, “I asked you that first.” 

“I know,” Felix says. His eyes are bright with something like remorse. “So I’ll tell you. I would be, if it wasn’t for the dreams.”

Jisung had made up a thousand hopeful daydreams over his lifetime about the moment Felix and him might meet. It would be in a pool on a family vacation, an order at a foreign cafe, a meet-cute at college orientation. They’d be friends immediately, they’d laugh and joke, they’d kiss until they couldn’t breathe. In his daydreams, they always knew each other immediately, like soulmates, knew each other through a bond forged in steel over years and years of dreams. To Jisung, it always seemed inevitable that they would just _know,_ not only that they would just know but they would go to each other immediately, like long-lost lovers reuniting after a long absence. 

This was nothing like how he’d imagined it.

“You lied to me,” Jisung says. “I asked you, and you lied.” He shivers with cold; the water is really starting to get to him.

“I’m sorry,” Felix whispers. 

“How long have you known?” 

“Since lunch, that first day,” Felix replies, never taking his eyes off Jisung’s face. “You’re…” He gestures vaguely. “Hard to miss.”

Jisung turns around, meaning to head for shore, blood thrumming in his veins even though he can’t feel his limbs. His breath is coming in short bursts, like he’s been running. He takes a step.

Felix grabs his arm and doesn’t let go, even when Jisung, barely polite, asks him to. “Jisung…”

“Why?” He asks, hearing his voice shake and hating it for betraying him. “Why did you lie?”

“I didn’t lie!” Felix says, almost frantically. “I just… I couldn’t. Not yet. I was afraid.”

“Of what?” Jisung replies, tearing his arm away. “What could you possibly have to be afraid of?”

There’s a pregnant pause. 

“You,” Felix says quietly. 

“Why the fuck would you be afraid of me?” Jisung snorts. 

“Because I’m in love with you, Han Jisung,” Felix says forcefully.

Jisung didn’t know it was possible for human beings to move in slow motion, and yet here he is, feeling like the world had stopped twice in the span of five minutes.

“You’re- you’re what?” 

“I’m in love with you,” Felix repeats. His cheeks are a dark pink, his hands visibly trembling by his sides. “I knew on the first day that it was you, but I didn’t really believe it until today. It’s so...” Felix gestures vaguely again. “It’s just… I thought you were a dream, and then you were real, and it was like magic, and I was afraid-”

“Okay,” Jisung whispers. Felix’s expression is doing that thing, the thing it did in the last dream they shared. He reaches out for Felix’s hand, almost unconsciously. “Don’t- don’t cry.”

Felix barks out a laugh. He rakes back his hair with one hand, eyes still bright. “I’m not crying.”

“Okay,” Jisung says again. He briefly glances at where Hyunjin and Daehwi should be; they’ve disappeared. _They better not come over here..._ “Uh, that’s kind of funny, though, because I’m kind of in love with you, too?”

Felix gives him a look. “I know,” he says. Then he reaches for Jisung, pulling him into a hug. And he’s surprisingly warm for someone probably 15 minutes away from hypothermia. His arms fit encircle Jisung’s back, hands splayed over his spine. His head fits perfectly on Jisung’s shoulder. “I know,” he says again. “That’s what I love about you.”

There’s a pause. “Jisung, I didn’t stop the dreams,” Felix says. “They just stopped by themselves. I don’t know why.”

Jisung doesn’t respond.

Felix smells like the sharp tang of salt. Jisung can feel the cold water in Felix’s shirt soaking through into his, but he doesn’t want to pull away. He breathes out, and his breath is a shudder. Some deep anxiety leaves him all at once. 

“I can’t believe you’re real,” Jisung says quietly. 

“I can’t believe _you’re_ real,” Felix replies, his voice muffled as he speaks into Jisung’s shoulder. “It’s like a dream.” 

But it isn’t- not in the way that matters. Because Jisung knows that if he lets go, he won’t wake up. Felix won’t disappear because he’s real, as real as Jisung had always hoped he would be.

It was never a coincidence. It was never a coincidence. Jisung was _right._

That night, Jisung is at Bondi Beach again, and it’s so achingly familiar that it almost makes him cry. The sky is a beautiful indigo blue, painted with a half-dozen constellations as well as thousands of single stars. The beach is dappled with starlight, the water reflecting endless tiny pinpricks of light as it disappears into the horizon. 

He feels a hand interlock with his own and looks over to see Felix staring into the waves, a faraway look in his eyes. His hair moves slightly with the breeze and the dark strands whisper across his forehead. His dark eyes are bright, bright with an emotion Jisung has come to recognize.

“You miss it, don’t you.” It isn’t a question, not really.

Felix simply nods. His gaze flickers to Jisung, then back to the ocean. 

“Are you going to swim?” Jisung asks gently, squeezing Felix’s hand.

Felix considers it for a moment. “No,” he says finally. “Not today. I don’t think it’s that kind of dream.”

Jisung’s heart thrums, but he doesn’t ask. He watches Felix’s face, the movement of his neck as he swallows. 

_He’s nervous._ The thought calms him. 

“I want to kiss you,” Felix says suddenly. “Can.. can I?”

Jisung doesn’t even respond- he just pulls Felix to him. 

And it’s lips and skin and quiet breaths and his hands in hair softer than moonlight, not broken images but a continuous, vivid, living picture. The stars shine bright on them like tiny promises, the beach steady beneath their toes, the crash of the waves murmuring in the background. It’s nothing and everything like Jisung expected. 

The dream is filled to the brim with something almost tangible, a feeling like a quiet whisper in the back of Jisung’s brain. And for the first time in his life, he doesn’t fear waking up.

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted to briefly thank everyone who made it to the end for reading this monster of a fic. I hope you liked it!


End file.
